Ouaga and Anticipation of Village

(my younger host brother and I doing as we do)
So with a few last good byes and a few sachets of shared gin I parted ways with Ouhigouya. I now am currently residing in the socio-political-economic hub of Burkina- The great city of Ouagadougou. It is indeed a bizarre experience returning to the grinding machine of a modern city after appreciating close to a monastic life for the past 3 months. It seems harder to think in this environment - the air is thicker here and there is a constant hum. I'm happy that the whole process of prepping for my affectation will be a brief process.

I can't express how unreal this city is. In a land of subsistence agriculture I can go down the street and buy frozen ice cream. The below picture is an above shot of the Marina Market- Ouaga's foremost food emporium. The expression on my face is one of confused excitement but that mood quickly changed when the nature of the place began to sink in. The notion of food being sold in a building, let alone organized in little rows is something unimaginable. Every PCVF (basically camp councillor for us stagaries) has told me that I will really miss this taste of the west after 6 months at village, but some how I doubt that. I cannot express how much I simply want to train in my solitude. I don't want to ride in cars. I don't want to shop in air-conditioning. I don't want to have the comforts of the states.


At the same time I can not be completely critical of this city. I can buy french poetry and note cards here. I can use the Internet here (thus revealing myself as exceptionally hypocritical with the method I chose to deliver this tirade) and through this, connect to the world. In Ouaga, there are tools available which are simply beyond the means of people in village. I just wish that these tools were available without the environmental and spiritual price tag city life. Striking a balance between the enabling, empowering qualities of modern life with its darker side is something I'm really working on here. I still enjoy my Ipod, I still use computers but I also recognize the link between consumption and brutality (thank you propagandhi).

Model School Winds to a Close

So I'm only about 2 hours away from giving my last test in model school. I've been teaching 3émé for the last 2 weeks and I have to say it has been a awesome- the material has been interesting, the kids have been engaged and I have begun to relax into the cadence of teaching in Burkina. Its actually kinda bittersweet that stage as a whole is finishing up. On the one hand I can't wait to get to site and on the other I had grown accustom to the pace of stage. It will be extremely exciting to be the only white/English speaker for 30km but I also might miss a couple of the crackers I have met here. So it goes as they say. Regardless, the next couple weeks are sure to be entertaining. We've got some model school closing ceremony shenanigans on Friday and after that just a weekend of parties until our squad heads back to Ouaga for our pre-site departure wrap-up and swearing in ceremony. I've ordered a burkinabé outfit to wear to the official stuff (it's really more of just a shirt, and an extremely campy one at that- It was made out of a religious print that has little picture of Jesus with sheep on it; to western eyes a good deal of burkinabé mens clothing looks more than a little ridiculous so instead of fighting it I decided to design an outfit that was completely over the top).

I've also ordered a table and chair to be delivered to my site. I have decided that all I need to feel happy in this world is a well built table, a chair at the appropriate height in relation to that table, and a text book. Throw in some free wieghts and running shoes (which by the way I have already begun designing a bush-weight room for my site) and I would be in ecstasy. I have begun working through the 7éme edition of Biologie by Campbell and it is just fantastic. There is something just too satisfying about working through a college biology book in french (I feel like it is the perfect fusion of scientific and linguistic intellectual endeavor).

I am also trying to form a general idea about what secondary projects I want to work on at my site. I'm set up to teach all 4 grades of SVT (science de la vie et de la terre) so that will run me about 20-25 hours of class time a week depending on how many extra classes I demand out of my students. I would also love to continue the girls club that Babet started. This seemed to be a great thing that the community really got behind. It might be kinda hard for me to continue it à cause de my Y chromosome, but I figure if I team up with another one of the female functionnaires (well educated government employee) I might be able to pull it off. I might also just warp it into a youth club with a female empowerment bent. The idea that I am most behind however is starting a music club at my site. As far as I know, no other volunteer has done something like that in burkina faso and given my irrational interest in creative expression in general and music in particular I am really excited about it. Musical instruments are very hard to come by in the poorer parts of this nation and I think an enterprise like this would play to my strengths in a way that a girls club or a forestry program would not. Despite the lack of available resources for music here, the love of music is simply overwhelming. I have yet to see a burkinabé not start singing and dancing as soon as live music starts. I think it would be a beautiful thing to start a music program over here at 1/20th the cost of an equivalent program stateside. I might also add that I have yet to see a female musician here so having a focus on female empowerment through music would be awesome.

I'm in the process of sorting through grants now and Im going to talk to some venders in Ouaga when I go down there to see if I can ballpark instrument costs here. I'm thinking at this point I want to get a couple djembe, a couple other local instruments and some really durable training instruments for the masses - perhaps 20 some recorders or equivalent wind instruments. All of that should not run me more than 600 American- the price of any one piece of percussion equipment that any American high school band possesses.

By the way, I'm going to try to spend more time working on these blog posts in two aspects. I have a profound understanding of my limitations as both a writer and a photographer so try not to expect to much out of these post, but hopefully through my efforts I will be able to improve their content (albeit slightly) over the next couple of years.
à la prochaine

The Gauntlet of Model School

So this week I began my first totale autonyme in-class teaching. For my first training group I have been handed 4ème A which is definitely a challenge. First things first, its Geologie. Now I don't know about you guys but the last time I had a geology class I was in the 8th grade. Its good training though because I will be having to teach it at site and really nailing the differences between ingnée métamorphique et sédimentaire before I get shipped off will be sure to help me. Also 4ème A is probly the most unruly of all the model school classes. While only numbering about 60 kids, is still about 60 percent bandits. The outlaws that compose the class know no fear and can smell uncertain teaching and shoddy french about 8 miles away. I started out this week a little too bold. I was totally in love with the notion of introducing critical reasoning and empirical thought to a land that seems to value facts over concepts. Unfortunately I was quick to understand that without class room stability you have nothing. My first couple classes were really well put together and really encouraging of critical thinking (I had tons of analogies and connections, I might add that I basically threw the text book in the garbage for them too- its a poorly written piece of shit that has no regard for logical form) but my in class delivery was way too soft. However, all that changed on Thursday. I told about 7 of my secondary ed bros that I was laying down the law that day so I got a whole crew of people of to come and observe me instill respect into the unruly mob. Not only did I just look super pissed the whole time (according to my fellow teachers) but I earned the award for being the first person in Stage to kick someone out of class. Unsurprisingly, on Friday they were quiet and attentive. On top of this, i managed to over the course of the week teach them about the formation of basalte and the mind blowing notion of how we're all floating on a sea of molten rock. They also got the connection that silice poor lava flows have different viscosity that silice rich ones, and also yeild different rocks. All in all Im really proud of my class. Im giving them a test on Thursday so hopefully they do well on it. Friday's class is devoted entirely to them stating objections to my test and me responding. Hopefully that goes smoothly. I am tempted to make the test a little easier to accommodate that but we'll see.
Till next

Site Visit AND Model School!

So things are moving pretty fast over here in OYGH. I just got back from a massive weak of counter part work shop and site visits. So to summerize, every volunteer is set up with a homolgue (basically a burkinabé person that is from your community and ideally has a similar job as you, in my case my bro is a physics, chem and math teacher- yeah we're a little understaffed in my neck of the woods) and mine bus'd it in from home to come into oahigouya for a little meet and greet. His name is Koné and he is a counter part to me in every sense of the word. Not only is he a great local rescource and a well conected amiable guy, but he is also a relaxed easygoing counterpoint to me the tightly wound overly passionate workaholic. We met on monday and had a few to many icebreakers and not enough content schedualed on the part of the peace corps for that day. However, that mild frustration paled in comparisson to the frustration of the tuesday which was an intire day devoted to VIH/SIDA sensibilation (hiv/aids ed). Don't get me wrong there is not a microbiologist in the world (not even a bacterio centric one such as myself) that would diminish the importance of HIV AIDS ed. HOWEVER, this day set out to enable the counterpart and the PCV to work together on eliminating HIV/AIDS in the community and did nothing but provide the victems with 9 hours of content-less lectures. Bah! The one shinning moment for me was when the asked the masses if they could name some oppertunistic infections which afflicted AIDS patients. My hand was up so. goddamn. fast. Anyways that aside the next day was an alright series of community meetings and orginzation for the site visit! Site visit was a chance for me to travel with my homologue to the the place I would be staying for the next two years. In addition to my counterpoint, I had the great babet (the gal who ran SVT-life science at my site before me) and Brigitte (a PCV whos site was too close to OYHG and thus wanted to go to a place that would require a little more negotiation of transport).

Anywho we Borded the OYHG bus and it was a site to say the least. In another life, this bus was perhaps a moroccan tourist liner but through several inheratances, the harsh mistress of time and the demands of burkinabé life it had warped into what can only be regarded as a burkinabé bus. It had about twice as many people as there were seats 12 happily breast-feading children and about 1 chicken for every two people. It was awesome. However, the full experience was somewhat diminsished when the announced that they would be sending two busses instead of one in our direction- our crew now had places to sit. It was still a magnificent experience watching the burkina country side fly by while the boldest of drivers flored it over dirt roads all to the soundtrack of cote d'ivoire hiphop at max volume. Our main stop was in my regional capitol (i will refer to it as T -for whatever reason Im not supposed to put my locations). T is a great place, It has probably the best youghurt in BF along with damn good bread and functional internets. Its a great place. Not to mention that babet introduced me to her entire crew including Ali who is probably the most "legit" (and I mean that in the strictly west coast gangster sense) guy in BF. He owns basically everything. In fact her whole crew there is hella awesome. We only lingered there for a couple hours before heading off to my site which I will refer to as L. Similarly my site is amazing. As we progressed towards it we noticed the greenery and diverse birds that signaled the temperate climate and the nerby bodies of water. It really is a different world in L, my counter part warns that it will all change once the dry season roles around but for now it is green, open and beautiful. Speaking of the openess, when I got to babet's house (soon to be my pad) I was struck by just how striking the environment is. Its kinda like my antonia prarrie- it has that romantic openess. My house is on the edge of my tiny tiny village (across from a family which has one man, 8 wives and 28 kids) and it has a view straigt west that spans across an open plain and into a far-off perimiter of trees. My first night there I watched a storm advance over this plain. It was truely picturesque- the setting sun, the dust spirals before the storm, the backdrop of lightning illuminated clouds- it defied discription. Im kinda running out of time at this cyber post so Ill try to hurry it up. My site was also wonderfull beside that though, and thanks to the nerby barage I enjoyed honest to god fresh grilled fish both nights I stayed there. I can't tell you how much agreeing with my site meant to me.

Anyway with that out of the way Ive got Model school this week which is sure to be a treat. I get a chance to enjoy burkinabé and PCVFs teach some classes. To finish this off Im including a nice picture of my life science crew. Till next time.

Site assignment and general excitement

So last week I found out where my eventual resting place in burkina faso would be. While I don't think I'm suppose to say exactly where it is I can assure you that is located in the north west corner of the country and very far away from much of anything else. To tell you the truth this is exactly what I wanted to hear. I really wanted to get the BF village feel while I was here and Ouahigouya (where I currently reside) seems to be just a little too big. Also despite its small size my village is going to be near a barrage which means that it will have some of the only fresh fish in Burkina Faso along with nearby rice patties and hippopotami. I'm also to be the only SVT teacher at site which means I'm going to be teaching every life science class the have including the dreaded 3ème. The reason why 3ème has a little more pressure than the others is that at the end of that year they have to take a test which will determine whether or not they can advance to the next stage- their performance determines whether they can advance or not. In fact this is such a responsibility that only 2 PCVs teach this class in the whole country- and none have in their first year. The only reason why I plan on doing it is that I will be replacing a woman named Babet (a god among mortals who I will talk more about later) who was "strongly encouraged" to teach the class simply because the students had no other option and if they wanted to have any chance at all of getting further education someone would have to teach it. This means that the pressure is on for me to learn French. I already train at least 2 hours a day (Outside of the normally allotted training periods which are substantial) but I'm hoping to kick it up a little including more work with the actual scientific text that I will be expected to teach from. There is a lot of material to cover and my vocabulary is insufficient at best at the present moment (not to mention my use of pronouns and prepositions is pretty sad, not to mention that despite my complete knowledge of que/qui usage I still consistently make mistakes). On top of this I have begun to integrate JulaKan (the local language of my region) into my training regiment. Its a wonderfully simplistic and auditory delightful language compared the convoluted European nightmares that I'm used to. One quirk of the language is that you lower your voice as you ask questions which can be rather confusing when alternating between french and Julakan. I'm also already thinking about what secondary projects I want to start up at my site. On thing that is sorely lacking fro the curriculum is a strong evolutionary focus. I am decidedly of the opinion (as most biologists are) that nothing in biology makes sense outside the context of evolution. Bringing that into my education as much as possible will be a focus of mine. I'm hoping on starting a science club that will focus on evolution, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS sensibilization. I also hope to continue the Girls Empowerment club that Babet started. Its going to be a lot of work to integrate myself well into the community, teach and do all this secondary stuff as well but I hope to fit it all in eventually. Don't get me wrong I'm still really relaxed at present moment, but I am concerned about the increase in stress once I get to site.

Special food entry

So I basically decided to have an entire blog entry devoted to what I eat in the glorious land of burkina faso. I will have some highlights and some lowlights but all in all I will try to give you a fair picture of the muchies which I eat. First off, we have the delicious to. It really defies description so I included a picture of it with a fabulous baobab leaf sauce. To the left you can see it in all of its rubbery glory. This is what I eat most days out of the week for dinner. Onto my typical Luncho. I randomly hit up sandwich shops around town which can include delicious 'meat' sandwiches or vegetable nonsense. There is also a lovely woman that makes the tastiest avocado sandwiches which I indulge in from time to time. Actually today I had one of the best luncheon experiences here. I munched a delicious plate of benga (translation; beans) with a demi baguette which was crazy retarded good. After that I went and snagged a mango and a couple of sachets of arachide sucre (thats what i call them i dont know the local name but they are basically sugar covered peanuts). It was so incredibly satisfying and it ran me about 350 cfa in total which is about 90 cents. For Bfast I usually just much some bread and boire some nescafe. very simple but it gets the job done. As for some of the high points. We recently had a fourth of July party that was simply amazing. The Mouton that we disassembled for the party truly was the highlight in my opinion. Mohammad, our butcher an all around party engineer put together a brilliant 4 spice rub for it that simply blew my mind. On top of that we had like 7 other courses that were totally phenomenal including tabbouleh, sweet potato fries and mango pie. I also assembled a seriously questionable lemonade that included a 3 dollar bottle of gin. All in all it was a good night.

So the rainy season broke its respite today and the brilliant heat of Burkina Faso recommenced. While Minnesota itself is a land of extremes I must say that Burkina really puts it to shame. The storms here are truely magnificent. The first one this season was preceeded by a wave of dust that could be seen 2 miles away. Watching the dim flashes of lighting through a wall of dust was truely awe inspiring. It really struck me a something that would be a more common sight on arakis than earth.

Food here is continuing to grow on me. I've only recently gotten a semblance of my former hunger back and right now it's treating me well. I've begun to scarf some ungodly portions with my host family (much to there pleasure).

All in all though, i have to say that things are continuing to go extremely well. I have to say that all things considered I find life much easier here than in the states. Not to say life is easy here (though none of us live in hobiton therefore I don't think any of us truely have an easy life) but honestly when you compare the inhumanity of the undergrad science work it really isnt that bad. Dont get me wrong, I loved my work in the states. The difference is that in the states i never felt like I finished anything well; I never fufilled my own expectations. Here its totally different. The only things I have to do are learn french and work on my cultural intergration. I never have to stay up all night, I never have to say no to fun for the sake of work (and more often than not saying yes to fun is fufilling my goals), I never have to have to break my back when Im hungry sleepy and frustrated when i could do it twice as efficiently the next morning (the lack of constant deadlines is really nice), I also dont have to sell my plasma to pay for groceries. I might also add that i can spend two hours studying every night and still have time to watch an episode of the daily show and practice my mandolin. Having freetime every night is a luxury I didnt have in the states. I had to take music classes (such as music theory and class piano) because I knew that unless the It was an assignment I could never afford to dedicate time to it. here, I can play mandolin whn I want to without feeling gulity. I also can get a full 8 hours sleep here regularly. I am awoken at 5 am every day by the pigs and the muslim call to prayer but its really not that bad because I can afford to go to bed at 9 (unlike in the states where I was always going to bed with something un finished). Again we dont have starbucks or airconditioning here but we do have humanity.